Remembering
by singbelivesee
Summary: Oneshot - JJ. Remembering is painful. Remembering is inconvenient. But remembering is so important, especially today.


**A/N: Dani here with my** ** _second_** ** _ever_ fic. Going with the same theme as my last one, I used a random word generator and got the word ****_banana,_** **so I let it inspire this little JJ oneshot. Let me know what you think!**

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Remembering

JJ was halfway through brushing her teeth (while simultaneously ironing her work pants and wondering why in God's name Strauss had called a consult meeting the morning after the team returned from a case) when she realized that it was silent. Silent with a 16-month-old is never a good sign.

"Hnrhhh?" she gurgled, as she turned off the iron and jogged to the bathroom to spit. "Henry, what're you doing, buddy?"

When she made it to the living room, where Henry _had_ been playing with his train table and babbling to himself, she gasped. Her precious baby boy was covered head-to-toe in her recently-purchased _Cabernet_ lipstick. A profiler at heart, she took in the scene: her purse, yanked down from the shelf where she'd left it and contents spilled on the floor; the squiggles and lines on the floor (thank GOD she'd convinced Will to rip up the carpet and put down wood); Henry's clothes, shed and left in a pile by the couch. She couldn't help but laugh, as Henry had at least been thoughtful enough to remove his clothes before beginning his art project. He grinned when he saw her, and she could see clearly that he hadn't just colored with the lipstick, but tried to eat it also. She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture, still laughing.

Grateful she was still in her pajamas, she scooped him up and sighed, "Why do you like being naked so much?" Henry only gurgled and smiled. JJ made a mental note to ask Hotch if Jack had gone through a stripping phase and what he and Haley had done about it.

She walked him to the kitchen and placed him in the high chair. She grabbed a washrag, wet it, and began trying to undo the damage. Fortunately for Henry, he'd grabbed the off-brand lipstick JJ had picked up at the drug store while she was gone on her last case, so it came off fairly easily. She'd been frustrated with herself at the time for forgetting her expensive all-day lipstick (after all, the media liaison did have to look perfect), but now she was glad. She heard Garcia's chirpy voice in her head, _Everything happens for a reason, Jayje_.

"Were you really just _that_ hungry?" she asked, exasperated. Her head was throbbing from only 3 hours of sleep, and due to back-to-back cases combined with quarterly Bureau meetings, she hadn't had a day off in _17 days_. JJ would never admit it, not even to herself, but she was really wearing down. Henry just gurgled back at her, all smiles, even getting his face scrubbed. She softened. "How about some real breakfast, then?"

He pounded one of his fists twice on the table tray in agreement.

Arms, face, and chest done, she glanced at the clock on the stove. 7:37am. "Mama's gotta go to work soon, buddy, so no pancakes today, but let's see what we've got…" She opened the fridge and pulled out the tray of homemade baby food, all neatly stored in matching, interlocking containers and carefully labeled with contents and dates. Will was always making fun of her for her insistence on homemade, organic, locally-sourced-when-possible baby food. _My mama raised me on white bread and crawfish, and I turned out just fine_ , he chided. But despite his joking, Will ended up making most of the purees himself. JJ could swear he even enjoyed it.

From his chair, Henry shouted one of his favorite words, "BannnnnUH."

JJ began searching, "yes, Henry, I'll find a buh-NAN-uh one." She found an apple-banana-avocado toward the back, dated 4/8 in Will's scratchy handwriting. She stared blankly at the container, trying to rack her tired brain – _what even is today?_ She pulled her phone out of her pajama pocket to check.

April 10.

Oh.

Her eyes welled with tears. She froze, fridge door open, just staring at her phone. _How could I have forgotten?_ It felt like betrayal.

Henry, exceptionally good at reading people for his age, offered a concerned, "Ma?" from across the kitchen.

His little voice startled her from her stupor, and she wiped her eyes before turning around to see him. "Found it," she choked, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. She pulled up a chair to sit in front of him. It was enough to break her heart, his sweet blue eyes wide with worry as he looked up at her.

She looked at the clock again and took a deep breath. She pulled out her phone and shot a text to Emily.

 _ **Can you cover me at the consult review meeting with Strauss this morning? 9, her office? I'll be in late this afternoon.**_

Almost immediately, she heard the text tone of a reply.

 _ **Absolutely. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.**_

 _ **Kiss my favorite boy for me.**_

JJ's heart warmed at her friend who knew her so well. Well enough to know that if JJ asked for help, especially with work, it meant she really needed it. Well enough to know not to push or ask what's up, but wait for JJ to tell her in her own time. She replied to Emily with the picture of Henry covered in lipstick with a caption:

 ** _Kiss at your own risk._**

Henry made an impatient sound and asked, "banUH babannnnnnUH?"

"Sorry, buddy" JJ breathed as she put her phone away. She opened the container, and Henry squealed with glee as the spoon made its way to him. Will feeds Henry most mornings because JJ likes to go into the office early, but Wednesday is Will's day to go in early to work for the weekly force-wide staff meeting. JJ loved Wednesday mornings with Henry. She always tried to get up early to make the most of their time together before she had to drop him off at daycare, but today, she'd been desperate for an extra 30 minutes in bed. The jet hadn't even landed until after 2 last night, and it'd taken her at least another hour to get home and wind herself down enough to sleep. They'd had two bad cases in a row, and the images of dead women and children haunted her, even as she lay safe in her bed.

Henry beat his hands happily on the table as he chomped down on the spoon. JJ cleared her throat. She always liked to talk to Henry when she fed him. She told him about the places she had been on her cases and any funny things Uncle Spence had managed to do while they were gone. She made up stories loosely based on their cases, but in those stories, there was no murder or gore, and in those stories, they _always_ saved the damsel and _always_ put the bad guy in jail. Valiant Morgan slayed the dragon. Brave Emily searched through perilous woods to find the lost little girl. Uncle Spence was the best at solving the riddles the mean old trolls always tried to block them with. The BAU, to Henry, was a merry band of crime fighters, who always, _always_ won. These were Henry's favorite stories.

Sometimes, but rarely, JJ would talk about what life was like when she was a kid. Soccer, vacations with Mom and Dad, but never…

It took a few seconds to work herself up to it, but finally she began, "T-t-today is – today," – Henry's eyes lit up at the sound of her story-telling voice – "today is a special day, Henry." She took a deep breath. "Today is my…someone very special to me…it's her birthday."

JJ wasn't sure how much Henry understood or took in of the stories she told. Still, she hadn't ever been quite ready to tell Henry about Rosaline. She hadn't known how, really, and truthfully, she tried not to think about it much herself.

"You know how Calvin next-door has an older sister?" Henry didn't confirm nor deny, but she continued on.

"Mommy had… has…an older sister, too. Today, Henry, is her birthday," with the last word, tears formed in her eyes again. _How could I have forgotten?_

She wasn't sure where to go next. Henry hummed as he swished apple-banana-avacado goop around his mouth, and she smiled, remembering something. The smell of bananas and brown sugar wafting through the air; her sister's sweet voice behind her singing _amazing grace how sweet the sound_ as her fingers pulled JJ's hair gently into another strand of braid; the whir of her grandmother's iron across the room as she pressed their Sunday dresses for church the next morning.

"You know, your aunt Rosaline loved bananas, too," JJ went on. She tried to ignore how strange the words Aunt Rosaline had felt coming out of her mouth. "She and mommy went to Great-Grandma Joan's house every Saturday night for a sleepover. And after dinner dishes were done, we would make a treat."

JJ felt the knot in her stomach slowly start to loosen. She continued, her storytelling voice livening up more by the second. "Sometimes, we would make strawberry cake! Other times, we would make chocolate chips cookies! Mommy likes those. But the best times were when we would make…" she finished with a leading kind of sound.

She pulled the spoon back from his mouth and pointed at the food left in it.

Henry yelled, "BannnnnUH!" He was rewarded with a spoonful.

JJ laughed and cooed, "Yes, Henry! Great-Grandma Joan helped us make buh-NAN-uh bread. And it was your Aunt Rosaline's very favorite." She sat back and looked at her son, who looked so much like his mother. So much like his aunt, who, if not for the age difference, could've been passed off as her twin. She tapped him on the nose, "Just like you, buddy!"

She scraped the bottom of the container for the last few bites and found herself humming. The words drifted through her mind like wings on a breeze.

 _Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,_

 _And mortal life shall cease,_

 _I shall possess, within the veil,_

She could almost hear a voice, singing soft and sure:

 _A life of joy and peace._

Henry's happy eating noises had quieted at her humming, so the kitchen was silent when she stopped. It had jarred her. _That line_. The air felt thick with the emotion of the moment – thick with the injustice of a once-joyful, once-peaceful girl, who ended up sad and sick enough to take her own life. JJ sucked in a deep, heavy breath, and looked up to the ceiling to keep her tears from falling.

She was startled when she felt Henry place his tiny hand on top of hers. He whispered, "bannnnuh, banuh" as if he meant them to be the tenderest words of comfort. She stared at him in disbelief, tears now streaming down her face. Her beautiful, thoughtful, sensitive son.

She smiled through her tears, and stood. She kissed him on the head and lingered for a moment, lips pressed against his white-blonde hair. Gratitude welled up in her heart almost like a prayer, a prayer to a God she wasn't sure she even believed in anymore. The God of her grandmother's kitchen, with the framed embroidery that read, _The Lord giveth and taketh away._ The God her sister had loved, but still couldn't manage to save her.

Time stopped as the enormity of all she had lost in this life – and all she had gained – washed over her, but only for just a moment. She swallowed hard as the moment passed. "Now," she said, tears gone and Mom-Voice resumed, "we've still got to clean off those legs!"

As she made her way to the sink, she caught sight of the rose bush in the front yard that Will had planted last year on this day, in her sister's honor. Something like hope flooded her when she spotted one tiny yellow bud near the bottom of the bush, just on the cusp of blooming.

She fingered the pendant around her neck as she whispered to the other half of herself, "Happy Birthday, Rosie."


End file.
